January Photo A Day Roundabundlewrap . Week 2

I’m participating with approximately 9,367 (totally unscientific estimate) people out there doing FatMumSlim‘s photo-a-day project for January and roundin’ all of these little pixels here each week, generally on Saturdays. Why a photo a day challenge? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I find myself (as a writer) seem to find myself at a loss for words these days and am preferring more to take pictures on a daily basis rather than natter on about my life. Or I needed yet another seemingly productive procrastinatory tool in my toolbox. Or because….nothing. There’s nothing there. See, I told you I couldn’t seem to locate words lately. This could prove to be problematic, but we’re going to worry about that less right now than other things. Like what’s for dinner tonight.

I started to round-a-bundle them all up for you last Saturday, and didn’t finish…until today, which makes me about a week behind — or, OR, it’s a treat, really: you get two weeks right in a row! See how I make it sound like you’re getting quite a steal through exclamation marks, strategic words and subtle compliments, you Uber Thrifty Person Who Is Awesome?

If you’d like to take a gander, week one is here, and week three is just around the corner.

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Day nine: Routine.

The picture above was taken in the Ikea cafeteria while consuming way too many meatballs, which I should really make a daily routine. I could move to Denver, change my name to something Swedish like Annnnikka, which in my mind justifies the eating of meatballs from my home country every day, and shop for cheap Scandinavian goods all the live long day.

I could also remain married. Dilemma.

The funny thing about routines is that I really love having one as long as I can abandon it at anytime, which somewhat goes solidly against the definition of what a routine is. Without a routine, though, I feel willy-nilly, drifty, and other unpleasant adverbs that start making me itchy and desperate. So, what I’m saying is, I’ll have a routine, break it, then make a new routine, break it all the time, rinse and repeat. I don’t know if it works for me, but it’s what I do. I am both pro and anti-routine. So, sue me! (Actually, don’t sue me, because then I won’t have money for Ikea).

Two things that do find their way into the routines I create and destroy are reading + eating, preferably together. Every single day, I can honestly say that I stop to eat (no eating on the run, even though I do always have snacks in my purse) and stopping to read something. And we’re still working on adding more meatballs to that.

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Day ten: Childhood.

In my office I have three shelves filled with all of the cameras I’ve used over the years–from my very first Canon AE-1 to the six different polaroid cameras I collected over the years. My very first camera, however, was this one. A little wooden point-and-shoot with a bright red string for a camera strap, and a wad of fossilized pink gum on the back (not pictured because I’d like to retain you all as readers and friends). I thought I wanted to be a photographer when I grew up (this was before the proliferation of what my friend Megan calls “fauxtographers” out there who simply own nice camera equipment rather than skill and talent, but after being hired to photograph one wedding when I was 20, I promptly ended photography as a career choice. Words are way more my speed, and they don’t have to constantly be reminded to stop smiling so weird.

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Day eleven: Where you sleep.

Can I just say that my bedroom is one of my very favorite rooms of the house, and not for the “this is where the magic happens” MTV Cribs-style wink-wink-nudge-nudginess? Why am I asking permission; I’m just saying it RIGHT NOW. Permission-be-damned! Power to the people! (I may have just had a little too much sugar.) We inherited the bedroom set from my grandmother, and it is some olive-wood-laminated goodness circa 1940’s that I love, including those great lamps that I keep contemplating painting until I get way too nervous and back down.

But, the art project on the wall was recently completed, and it’s one of our very favorite projects we’ve taken on–and SO simple. If When we get our Fixer Creative Co. website up and running hopefully before it’s 2013 or kills us both we’ll do a full tutorial on how to make it, but in the meantime let me tell you that you just need a whole lotta nails and some string. We did it in an afternoon and I really find it charming, don’t you?

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Day twelve: Close-up.

This is a close-up of my wedding rings and the boutonierre (which my computer is telling me is misspelled, but you know I totally looked it up to make sure) that my friend Sarah and I made for my wedding. Basically, now that the wedding is done, you’re looking at the most expensive and least expensive souvenirs from my wedding.

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Day thirteen: In your bag.

Oh, I had grand illusions about this one. See, I really love looking at what people have in their bag. Like these photos from Fresh Pics? I could look at them every day. It’s very telling, I think. So I was going to pull out all my stuff, organize it all neatly and catalogue it in a photo. But when it came down to it, I had to go meet a friend for lunch and I work up late, and after peering into the deep recesses of said bag I realized I would have to fully clean out my bag just to unearth the things that are in my bag and round up the small creatures who have now signed up for mailing addresses and utilities in my bag in order to take a photo of whats IN MY BAG.

And I got tired just from typing the phrase “in my bag” about seventy times.

There are reasons for this crazy hot mess in my bag, sure, like switching between bags that can hold my computer and ones with fun stripes and ones that match my shoes, but really — I’ll always be the girl who has crumbs in the bottom of her bag. Always. I think I can live with that.

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Day fourteen: Something I’m reading.

I always have an epically long list of books that I’m going to read, but sometimes I’ll find a few that just weasel their way up to the top, cutting in the book-reading line. This was one of the first books I read this year, a decidedly fascinating entreaty into the world of haute cuisine. If you don’t know what haute cuisine is, you are a) not alone and b) can understand it by just calling it “really fancy and expensive food.” Kidding aside, mostly, the author takes a look inside elBulli, a restaurant that I can’t seem to encapsulate fully in one sentence. Basically, they make really fascinating, tasty, avant-garde food, and until 2010 when they closed down only to reopen next year as a sort-of culinary “think tank”, was only open 6 months out of the year and you could only get reservations if you were friends with Gwyneth Paltrow or the mayor of Spain. (Note: not real sure Spain has a mayor as its head of state, but I was writing this while wikipedia was on a clicky-strike against SOPA, and I moved on. As should you.)

The kitchen hosts a large group of interns each year, called stagiares who all do a rotation, or stage, at the restaurant and try to absorb as much as they can from Ferran Adria, the big cheese (pun intended!) and try not to complain about creating thousands of spherical olives by dropping goop (scientific term) by syringe into a specially made bath. Every day, for months.

It’s actually really interesting. Or I’m just easily curious about everything. But it’s definitely one of the two.